Fungal-infections have become the major cause for the high incidence and mortality in immunodeficiency patients. During the past 20 years, the incidence of mycotic infection has increased significantly. The high-risk population for the fungal-infection includes critical patients, surgical patients and the patients with HIV-infection, leukemia as well as other tumors. Additionally, the organ transplant recipients are also the high-risk population for fungal-infection.
The echinocandins are novel anti-fungal medicaments, which are effective in treating Candida- or aspergillus-infections, and the examples of which are Caspofungin and Micafungin. The echinocandins inhibit the fungi by inhibiting the formation of 1,3-β glucosidic bond, thereby reducing the toxicity toward the human and the side effects, while maintaining high efficiency. Therefore, compared with the traditional antifungal-medicaments, the echinocandins are safer when they are used.
FK463 (Micafungin) is the compound of Formula III, which is obtained by removing the side-chain of the precursor, compound FR901379 of Formula I (M0) through an enzyme reaction, thus forming compound FR179642 (M1) of Formula II by chemical modification. Therefore, the compound of Formula I with high-purity is very important for obtaining Micafungin with high-purity.

EP0431350B1 has disclosed a method for purifying the compound of Formula I, wherein, the method comprises the following steps: the fermentation liquid is extracted by acetone; the filtrate is concentrated for removing acetone, washed by ethyl acetate, and extracted by n-butanol; the n-butanol phase is concentrated to dryness; and the compound of Formula I is obtained by silica gel chromatography. For this method, great amount of organic solvent is needed, and silica gel which will not be degraded and severely pollute the environment is used, therefore, such method will be adverse to the environment protection, be harmful to the physical healthy of the operators, and not suitable for large-scale production.
Therefore, it is urgent in the art to find a purification method without using great amount of solvent and silica gel, and such method can not only overcome the defects in the prior art, but improve the purity of the compound of Formula I.